Training Hard for the Death (Race)

Two bystanders who regularly walk these woods gave Marblehead firefighter James Horgan and his fellow log rollers no chance for success.

It was early Mother's Day morning. Some rollers had been here at the Lynn Woods since midnight.

Now, at 6:30 a.m., they were burning calories in earnest. They were grunting and encouraging as they pushed a huge log up a steep trail.

Gravel crunched each time the log budged.

Early on the hill the log tended to pivot to one side, and the group sought rhythm and balance to best move it over the half-mile trail.

The older gentlemen who walk these woods — and regularly see this group, the Stone Tower Fitness group, flipping tires the size of small cars, shouldering poles and cutting wood — gave the group no chance of rolling their log to the tower.

But an inevitable thing happened while the two gentlemen fell into chatter. The log rollers' pushing progressed. Sometimes a few feet, sometimes a few yards, sometimes slipping backwards.

They worked in unison, pushing at the same time, holding their ground at the same time.

Within 30 minutes the stone tower came into view. The taller of the two gentlemen looked up — wide-eyed.

"They are going to make it," he said.

At the hill top, the log rested. James Horgan said completion was never in doubt.

There is, however, little certainty, that the group will succeed in what it is preparing to do on June 21.

They will take part in the 2013 Peaks Races Death Race at 5 a.m. in Pittsfield, VT.

Ninety percent of those who begin will stop, sweaty and broken, short of the finish.

The participants will not learn until they arrive exactly what the challenge will be. The endurance test includes mud runs, obstacle racing, trail racing, physical challenges and mental challenges in 48-plus hours, according to race organizers.

For instance, the first event of the 2011 Spartan Death Race, participants had to deadlift 30-50 lb boulders and other assorted items 1,000 times — and were given five hours to complete the challenge. That was the first of many events.

The Stone Tower group includes James, Andrew Hostetler, Eric Matta and a collection of men and women who work in nursing, accounting and finance.

They are stay-at-home moms, fitness devotees. They are in the military, out of the military. They are firefighters and police officers and teachers. They come from all walks of life.

Many of them are in their 30s and 40s and raising children.

Who they are is easier to answer than why they are preparing for and taking part in the death race, says James Horgan.

James, who was up most the night before with his sick daughter, said it defies reasoning to explain why they are out here challenging themselves and each other in the cold and heat and darkness and rain.

They undertake grueling physical tasks and the mental challenge that come with hours of repetition is equally grueling.

But he gives an explanation a try.

Somehow what they do, at least for him, links them with each other and to the past, the men and women who came before them and struggled with back-breaking work each day to survive.

It links them to today's laborers and the lifting and moving and pushing and pulling that they do.

It attracts some people who have grown bored with triathlons and boot camp training and want to take on a new and different and seemingly insurmountable challenge, he said.

In a way, they are like farmers, he said.

They are up early and working at life.

Only the crop they are growing is people, themselves.